Posted: Sep 22, 2012 1:04 PM
Updated: Sep 22, 2012 1:04 PM
NEW YORK (AP) - New York City police say they plan to arrest a man mauled by a tiger at the Bronx Zoo.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Saturday that 25-year-old David Villalobos told investigators that he deliberately leaped into a zoo exhibit because he wanted to be "one with the tiger."
Browne says the hospitalized victim will be charged with trespassing.
Villalobos remained hospitalized in stable condition Saturday after the 400-pound cat bit him in the back. He also suffered broken bones in the jump Friday from an elevated train that circles the exhibit.
The spokesman says that when a police officer asked Villalobos why he did it, the victim responded, "Everybody in life makes choices."Authorities say a visitor at the Bronx Zoo leaped from an elevated monorail train and plummeted into an exhibit, where he was mauled by a tiger.
NEW YORK - (Sept. 21, 2012) New York City police say the man suffered puncture wounds to his back from the mauling. They say he also has a broken ankle and a broken arm.
Police initially had said the man lost a leg.
Zoo director Jim Breheny says the mauling happened Friday afternoon in the Wild Asia exhibit, where a train takes visitors over a tiger enclosure. He says the man leaped from the train and cleared a perimeter fence.
Workers used a fire extinguisher to back the tiger off. The man then rolled under a wire to safety.
Police say the 25-year-old man has been hospitalized in critical condition.